Movie Nation

An epic poem carved in flesh and written in blood, “The Revenant” is the American frontier myth as it really was — venal and brutish, murderous and vengeful.

It makes for a great film, an American classic and one of the best movies of 2015.

Director Alejandro González Iñárritu (“Birdman”) transforms Leonardo DiCaprio into not just a mountain man, but a man in full — hoarse, battered, broken, but kept alive by one thought — avenging himself on the man who left him for dead.

DiCaprio is Hugh Glass, guide for a team of trappers who are ambushed by Indians in the West of the 1820s. He is no superman, and is no more responsible for the survival of those who escape than their captain (Domhnall Gleeson) and sheer luck.

Glass once took an native woman for a wife, and his son (Forrest Goodluck) is the only survival of that union. But as the party is chased by natives and races the coming winter, misfortune dogs Glass. A horrific bear attack, and that should be all she wrote.

“What you holdin’ on to, Glass? You ready to take the Sacrament?” trapper John Fitzgerald (Tom Hardy) wants to know. “I could do that for you.”

The racist and murderous Fitzgerald and Glass have been feuding over everything bad that has befallen the company. The guide’s grievous wounds are the only excuse Fitzgerald needs. If he can just get the man’s son out of the way.

The burly, surly Hardy has instant credibility as Fitzgerald. It is DiCaprio, and the vivid, horrific and realistic (digital) bear attack that are the picture’s hard sells. The actor, whose character is rendered almost mute by his ordeal, benefits from the silence and the hoarseness that follows.

The survival epic takes Glass across the wintry wilderness, into contact with friendly (and unfriendly) natives, and DiCaprio is convincing in every frame. The boyish voice and baby face, evident even in “The Wolf of Wall Street,” disappears behind grimaces, torn skin, blood and fur.

Gleeson is considerably more at home here than in his villainous supporting role in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” a performance that required him to do a lot of pacing with his hands behind his back. The British actor Will Poulter (“Son of Rambow,””We’re the Millers”), playing another member of the fur trapping party, is the very embodiment of greenhorn — slow to lose the values, and the baby fat — of the civilization he left behind.

This is the most fascinating corner of frontier history, before the trails had been blazed, before civilization stuffed cattle, cowboys, school marms and men with guns, some with badges, into the West. Inarritu revels in the simple wildness of it all — tall trees, raging rivers, snowswept prairies.

The color palette is all rustic browns and red blood as befits the primal story being told. This is Biblical, a world before law, where justice is “an eye for an eye.”

And Inarritu gets that, delivering a riveting saga of pain, grit and the brute moral relativism of revenge, the first law of all, and the only one that mattered back then. “The Revenant” is one of the best pictures of the year.
MPAA Rating: R for strong frontier combat and violence including gory images, a sexual assault, language and brief nudity

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hardy, Domhnall Gleeson, Will Poulter, Forrest Goodluck
Credits: Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, script by Mark L. Smith and Alejandro González Iñárritu, based on the Michael Punke novel and the 1971 film “Man in the Wilderness.” A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 2:36

“The Hateful Eight” is Quentin Tarantino’s latest genre mashup, a violent, profane and funny updating of the Golden Age of TV Westerns.

Horses pulling a stagecoach pound through the snow, hard men threaten, curse each other and slap the tar out of a hard woman, shots are fired and blood is spilled. They all pile into a roadhouse, a saloon, Minnie’s Haberdashery, and ride out blizzard — “Ten Little Indians” style. And they’re killed off. One by one. Sometimes two by two.

Stretched to three hours, including a pointless (old fashioned) overture and intermission, a little afterthought narration, does it live up to the “Cinema Event” Tarantino has hyped it as? Hell no. It’s just a minimalist Spaghetti Western suffering from auteur bloat — sometimes entertaining,  with not even remotely enough story or action to support its insufferable length and “gravitas.”

It’s like an R-rated riff on “Six Characters in Search of an Author,” or more exactly, an episode of the late 1960 TV series “The Rebel,” whose episode “Fair Game” apparently provided the narrative framework for the film.

Kurt Russell heads this cast of archetypes. He’s the bounty hunter, John Ruth, “The Hangman,” hell-bent on delivering this “dangerous” woman, Daisy Domergue, (Jennifer Jason Leigh, in the best role she’s had in decades) to justice. Just how dangerous is she?

“She ain’t no John Wilkes Booth.”

Samuel L. Jackson is the dapper, overdressed and well-armed Army vet, Major Marquis Warren, who stops their private hire stagecoach.  He can ride with them, providing he drops his guns, slowly, “molasses like.”

A racist badman turned lawman (Walton Goggins) also hitches a lift. And then they arrive at Minnie’s to wait out the storm. That’s where “The Cow Puncher” (Michael Madsen, looking nothing like a cowboy, playing with his hair the whole time), the English Fop (Tim Roth, perfect) and The Confederate Officer (Bruce Dern) are already ensconced, with only the Mexican, Bob (Demian Bichir) to look after them.

Nowhere in sight? Minnie.

The wary new arrivals wonder about this set-up, John Ruth especially. And in this drafty, roomy “haberdashery,” schemes and intrigues will turn up, bullets will fly, anecdotes about the late war (men from both sides are here) and “The Cause,” will be related.

And pretty much one and all find some excuse to drop assorted N-bombs on Jackson’s Major. Dapper or not, he’s still barely half a step up the social ladder from the hateful Daisy Domergue, and not just in Tarantinoland.

The pleasures are in those anecdotes — about the late President Lincoln, atrocities committed during the war, desperadoes doing desperate deeds — Tarantino cooks up. Characters speak in a more modern vernacular than you’d like, a common Tarantino failing.

The drafty, more expansive than claustrophobic  saloon makes an interesting crucible.  The mystery is less mysterious than you’d hope, and some of the plot twists, introduced in “Chapters” that break the three act piece into smaller fragments, are clumsy. But the cast — several of whom are Tarantino veterans — is game, with only Madsen standing out as a weak choice. Russell bites off lines with gusto, Jackson is…well, Jackson. And Leigh delivers menace and true hatefulness in every brown-toothed close-up.

After an opening act (the stagecoach ride) that shows promise, the picture settles into a watchable bloat that should have you planning your bathroom breaks with care. The novelty of making a nicely-detailed Western in this day and age loses its bite if you’ve seen Russell’s low-budget indie thriller, “Bone Tomahawk,” or Adam Sandler’s spoof of this film, “The Ridiculous 6.” Hollywood can still manage a convincing Horse Opera on a budget.

But there simply isn’t enough here to justify this long a wallow in Tarantino-land. An overture? For a movie with very little music actually in it? Talk about overkill. “Kill Bill,” this ain’t.

MPAA Rating: R for strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity

Cast: Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samuel L. Jackson, Tim Roth, Demian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Walton Goggins, Channing Tatum
Credits: Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. A Weinstein Co. release.

Running time: 2:48

Our friends at Continuity Errors Inc., also known as Moviemistakes.com, have named “Furious 7” as the most mistake prone (aka sloppiest) film of 2015.

As if that was its only sin.
“Jurassic World” also earned their ire.

Both terrible movies, in their own way, with or without lapses in logic and booboos by people writing, dressing the set, editing, acting and directing them.

And both critically-lauded, by and large, “great” movies to judge by the Rottentomatoes tomatometer and to a lesser degree, the more sober (and accurate) metacritic scale. Monster hits at the box office, too.

Think back to watching the films, or better yet, poll your friends. Anybody want to admit loving them now?

News flash, they were crap. The “Hunger Games” finale, equally lauded, bit hit for a month. Seriously, who thinks that’s anything more than a tepid curtain call for a generally mediocre franchise?

“Creed” is likewise just another formula “Rocky” movie with a new (30 year old) “kid” tutored by Rock Balboa, played by Sly Stallone with the distant memory of how he used to play this character (same hat, same wardrobe, 40 years later). Also praised to the hills by critics, a decent sized hit. People are talking up Stallone for an Oscar nomination. Mush-headed comfort food for filmgoers who don’t want to be challenged.

And then there’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” essentially a much less thrilling remake of “A New Hope.” It’s supposed to be a sequel, but follows almost exactly the same storybeats, narrative and location management as “A New Hope.” Starts and ends EXACTLY the same. Acting? Uninspiring.

Praised to the roof. Through the roof.

What the hell?

I was out of step with the critical mass on all of these films, so believe me, I get the “The gall of him” nature of pointing out how I think I was right and “they” were wrong, of how wrongheaded the great majority of reviews seem to be for these popular and critical hits (at least the day they opened). But seriously. What. The. Hell?

Is it just sentiment? I mean, do reviewers get lumps in their throat of recognizing “Spectre” as a limp farewell to Bond for Daniel Craig, or “Furious 7” as a “tribute” to died-too-young Paul Walker? Are fond memories from our youth coloring the “Jurassic World” plagiarism, the “Creed” resuscitation or the “Force Awakens” photocopy?

Reviewing gigs are scarce, and there’s risk (with your employer) to being out of touch with what’s popular. I know. A generation of curmudgeonly, “The hell with the consequences” critics raised in journalism have died out or been forced out. Fear makes you go with the flow, confuse “popular” for “enduring.

Then there’s the way lowered expectations work. Many friends have said “Not half bad,” and some reviews have read that way. People were a little scared of what Abrams would do to “Star Wars.”

The answer? Nothing that would surprise you.

The proliferation of fanboy (and fangirl) sites are tilting the reviewing aggregate into something more disposable. “A critic reviews for the artist, and the ages,” an old saying goes, “a reviewer reviews for the audience.”

And reviewers, most with little experience and zero staying power, are foaming at the mouth over movie garbage. There was a time when the mere label of “sequel” denoted “lazy” and “cynical.” A sequel is still both of those things. But the number of professional people who can tell the difference between a product and an out-of-body-experience marvel, or a moving work of movie art, has shrunk.

So every minor variation of that Young Adult “chosen one” called to save us from a sci-fi dystopia earns attention from the masses, and an unsettling under-reaction from critics. “Divergent” and “Maze Runner” “The Giver” and what not are merely the worst of the lot. Until they get hugely popular, critics may have the guts to say so.

But let “Divergent” get bigger and bigger, and the reviews soften, even as the films themselves devour and recycle their own backstories.

I can “just go with it” with the best of them. I cut Lucas a lot of slack with the “Star Wars” prequels because he was at least expanding the universe and its species, and trying to advance the plot by backfilling into the original films. That isn’t happening with the myopic clone “Force Awakens.”

We are endorsing nostalgia as a dominant expectation of movie art. We have become movie going versions of Britain, forever remembering “Their finest hour,” stuck in the warm and fuzzy past, lining up for inferior copies by inferior directors of films that were regarded as disposable popcorn pictures in their day. Beloved, but not ambitious.

The Russian Formalist Vladimir Propp said their are basically 27 plots, something echoed by Joseph Campbell in his “The Hero with a Thousand Faces,” required reading for the likes of George Lucas. So there are only so many basic plot structures, and the reason these simple pictures entertain is that they work by those Formalist rules.

But I got the distinct impression, interviewing the pretty pixie who cut and pasted together the “Divergent” abortion, that she wasn’t even reach George Lucas’s interpretation of Campbell. Why bother?

All the wondrous reviews and the staggering box office of these five retreads of 2015 ensures is that we’ll get more unchallenging, unoriginal comfort food — “branded” entertainment of the “Walking Dead”/”Avengers” variety, in the future. And thus do generations that once outgrew genres and got bored with “the same old story” sit, ensconced on the comfy chair of their self-shrunk horizons.

Glowing reviews (for the most part) and fan hysteria are driving “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”” to the all-time opening weekend record at the box office.

A staggering $250 million+ is projected, based on Thursday night/Friday’s numbers. Better than the best of the Potters, hungrier than any “Hunger Games.” It may pass the total take of the latest “Hunger Games” blockbuster on just its opening weekend. Big. Really big. Is everybody seeing it thrilled with it? Not likely. But some are going a second time already, so it’s reaching its audience. For sure.

That godawful “Chipmunks” sequel is hitting the mid-teens on its opening weekend.For God’s sake, think of the CHILDREN. $14 million? Ugh.

That’s just ahead of “Sisters,” which got decent reviews but is just getting the wind sucked out of it by the SW beast.

“Creed” may reach $100 million by year’s end. “Hunger Games” is at $254 or will be by Sunday night. Three grossly overrated rehashes making bank. No wonder J.J. Abrams didn’t do a damned thing with the “Star Wars” formula. People like their movie comfort food, especially this year.

“Spotlight” has been the biggest hit among the Oscar contenders, with “The Big Short” going into limited release and doing quite well per screen.

Above, please see the only decent sight gag in “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip.” Alvin, Simon and Theodore pose as exotic sports car hood ornaments to hide from a Federal air marshal chasing them between LA and Miami.

Cute.

Whatever slim charms were in the first film of this singing/chatting/pranks-pulling chipmunks revival have utterly been wrung out of it, at this stage. The comic pickings are slim, even by the reduced standards of movies aimed at the smallest of the small fry. There’s barely a laugh in this thing.

Jason Lee tries not to look humiliated to be taking money for playing “Dave,” the dad to the three orphaned critters. Dave’s producing a pop starlet’s new record. She’s played by the leggy Bella Thorne, and the record release party is in Miami. Dave can go. He takes his new girlfriend (Kimberly Williams-Paisley, years removed from “Father of the Bride”).

The chipmunks, and the girlfriend’s bully boy son (Josh Green) try to crash that party, but create mayhem on the plane and are forced to make their way to Miami by other means. Sounds like trouble.

“If by trouble, you mean irresistible, GUILTY as charged!”

A stop at a line-dancing Texas honky-tonk, a sing-along in New Orleans, chased by this vengeful Fed (Tony Hale, given nothing funny to do) every step of the way.

They sing “I like big BUTTS and a I cannot lie,” and “Iko Iko” and a few other tunes.

Alvin swaps insults with kinky filmmaker John Waters on a plane.

“Don’t judge ME! I saw ‘Pink Flamingos!'”

A fart joke, a rodent pellet gag, all harmless enough.

Why even bother reviewing these? Well, the first one had a few adorable moments and worked well enough for its tiny tots audience. Movies like this serve a function, raising a new generation of young filmgoers as they transition from cartoons to live action. I’m just not sure setting the bar this low is doing them, or their suffering parents, any favors.

MPAA Rating:PG for some mild rude humor

Cast: Jason Lee, Bella Thorne, Josh Green, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, Tony Hale and the chipmunked voices of Justin Long, Jesse McCarthy, Kaley Cuoco, Anna Faris, Christina Applegate
Credits: Directed by Walt Becker, script by Randi Mayem, Adam Sztykiel. A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 1:26

Flip, furious and hilariously chilling, “The Big Short” is a comical primer on the global financial meltdown, as engineered by the “idiots” and “morons” of Wall Street, and the toadies who failed to rein them in.

It explains, in deliciously campy side vignettes, the how and what of all these acronyms and euphemistically-named “instruments” by those we sometimes to remember to focus our outrage upon.

Based on the Michael Lewis (“Moneyball”) book and script, it features a compact and pithy supporting performance by Brad Pitt and scintillating star turns by Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, and Steve Carell, as the loud-mouthed outsider-insider who fumed and fulminated about the “fraud” he saw taking over Wall Street — even as he was hedging his bets about how to cash in on the collapse he saw coming.

Gosling’s swaggering Jared Vennett narrates the story, taking us back to when banking and bankers were boring and middle class. Ancient history by the mid-2000s, when greed that led to bad practices and spread from suddenly richer and hipper Wall Street, down to Main Street, where any schmuck could stack up loans to load up on real-estate, all under the lax oversight of the George W. Bush administration.

Christian Bale briliantly interprets the eccentric genius fund manager Dr. Michael Burry, who first realized that banks were heavily into bad home mortgages, and got those banks to invent and sell him credit swaps that allowed them to insure against the apocalyptic mass default that he was sure was coming, allowing him to “bet short.”  It doesn’t happen, they keep his premiums. It does, and he makes his reluctant –sometimes hostile — investors filthy rich. And the banks go bust.

Vennett was another bank employee in-the-know who peddled these credit swaps as a way to make money when the world was about to crash  down around their ears.

Carell is Mark Baum, a rude rageaholic and fund manager who blows his fuse at every fresh proof that evil banks are screwing over working people and ignoring the time bomb that they’ve created with these subprime mortgages.

And Brad Pitt is the ex-broker who helps a couple of young Turks (John Magaro, Finn Wittrock) play with big boy money at the same credit swap game.

“Talladega Nights” director Adam McKay was an odd choice, but the right one, to turn Lewis’s anecdote-and-economics book into a film. Gosling’s Vennett pauses the picture, here and there, to get “Margot Robbie, in a tub of bubbles” or “Here’s world famous Chef Anthony Bourdain” in a kitchen full of spoiling fish, or Selena Gomez at the blackjack table, to explain this or that arcane bit of financial tomfoolery — what those acronyms that brought down other acronyms (AIG) and famed banks (Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, etc.) are. It’s flippant, but it works as a device.

Diatribes are cut-off, mid-sentence. Montages serve up a blizzard of context, a post 9/11 America that was too distracted by Barry Bonds cheating, Britney Spears melting down and assorted reality TV shows, to say nothing of assorted wars, to “pay attention” to high finance.

Characters are forever saying “How come nobody’s talking about this?” and “They call me ‘Chicken Little,’ they call me ‘Bubble Boy,'” for pointing out “THEIR stupidity” and fraud. Carell is best at this name calling, Gosling smirks and takes abuse because he knows he’s right. Bale bangs on drums and suffers, patiently, as he waits for the ratings agencies to admit the market has collapsed and thus make his lucrative prediction come true.

There are no heroes here. Nobody goes to the Feds or the press until the rigged system threatens to mask its meltdown and keep them from cashing in.

Thus, “The Big Short” becomes not just amusing and explanatory, a real tour de force for its fast-talking cast. It’s an election year caution flag. “Nobody is talking about this” applied then, when the end was in sight. And it applies now, when few  of those who wrecked the world’s economy paid a price, and the lessons not learned seem to be re-inflating the bubble awaiting another handful of mavericks to see Doom and figure out a way to make it pay.

MPAA Rating:R for pervasive language and some sexuality/nudity

Cast: Christian Bale, Steve Carrell, Ryan Gosling, Marisa Tomei, Brad Pitt
Credits: Directed by Adam McKay, script by Michael Lewis and Adam McKay. A Paramount release.

Running time: 2:10

The universe has gotten a lot more diverse in the decades since we first visited “A galaxy far far away.” And less sexist.

There’s a Republic, and plenty of reminders — crashed warships, grizzled veterans — of the war that brought it back.

But evil has reared its ugly head. The First Order is less subtle than the evil Empire about its affection for fascist optics, fascist storm troopers and fascist practices — massacring civilians and what not. But perhaps there are people with souls underneath those scary white (and black) helmets.

So a Resistance has formed, led by The Usual Suspects. And the war among the stars begins again.

J.J. Abrams’ “Star Wars” reboot,  “The Force Awakens,” begins with smuggled plans. OK, it’s a map this time. There’s an adorable droid entrusted with the map. He gets away on a desert planet. Advice from a sage of the desert — warmly played by the great Max Von Sydow — is taken.

Escaping from the planet involves a dazzling dogfight and the Millennium Falcon. Old friends show up, and the map makes its way toward people who might be able to prevent this big round thing from blowing up planets.

Sure, it’s still a fun ride — shootouts, getaways made via hyperspace, wisecracks. But pretending “The Force Awakens” is anything more than a glib facsimile of “A New Hope,” the original “Star Wars” movie, is delusional. It’s dull because it is achingly unoriginal. Abrams,  at every turn, plays it safe, with multiple “takes me right out of the movie” lapses.

In Disney’s hands, it’s a small galaxy, after all — billions of people, with a choice few just stumbling into each other in the most bizarre coincidences, fewer quest story plots to choose from (the same one), desert planets that have the same sorts of critters, bars with the same barflies, etc.

The new villains are  Kylo Ren, a black-helmeted brute who throws hilarious tantrums, shorting out all manner of electronics with his Crusader broadsword light saber. Adam Driver is Hayden Christensen reborn, in essence, a somewhat amusing menace with the helmet on, that tall, skinny, curly-headed funnyman from “Girls” and “This is Where I Leave You” with the helmet off. Miscast.

His best line? “We’re not done here.” Kind of lacks…something.

And there’s a Supreme Being, another digital creation acted out by Andy “Gollum” Serkis. At least he’s kind of scary.

The desert planet heroine, Rey, is a scavenger of Jakku played with pluck by Daisy Ridley. She’s waiting for “my family. They’ll be back, someday.”

She is no damsel in distress.

“I know how to run! Let go of my hand!”

The most interesting addition is the Storm Trooper with a heart. John Boyega shows the character’s humanity. Raised to blindly follow orders, the blood of his first combat makes him crack. Boyega lets us see the remorse, and maybe a little cowardice. He comes to be called “Finn,” because the First Order gave him no actual name.

The guy who names him that is crack Resistance pilot Poe, cartoonishly played by the normally reliable Oscar Isaac (“Ex Machina,””Inside Llewyn Davis”). Poe is captured and tortured, making feeble wisecracks all the while. He must sense that a Storm Trooper will turn traitor (for the first time EVER) and help him escape.

But the moment Han Solo shows up, this becomes a Harrison Ford movie. Han’s a single-again grumpy old man a little flattered that Rey quotes his legend (“the Kessell run”) back to him, still bickering with Chewbacca, still reluctant to get involved until the chips are down. Even if Leia (Carrie Fisher) is the one asking for his help.

Ford’s easy comfort with a cheesy line has never faltered, and Abrams leaves the picture in his able hands for the middle acts.

The effects are sharper, 40 years more developed. Why does Abrams do so little to show them off? The chases, dogfights and set-piece battles are static and recycled. The Big Pause for a Big Death is just an eye-roller.

Even the aliens are oh-so-familiar, right down to Admiral “It’s a trap!” Ackbar.

The earliest reviews of this are all glowing, as indeed they were for this past summer’s “Jurassic Park” clone — “Jurassic World.” This will certainly make billions. “Brand” above all, right?

But “The Force Awakens” boils down to a couple of genuine lump-in-the-throat moments, and those are due to nostalgia. The rest? Seen it, done it, been there, and remember it — even though it was “a long time ago.”

(UPDATE — Now EVERYBODY realizes “Force Awakens” is a “glib facsimile” of “A New Hope.”

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for sci-fi action violence

Cast: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, Jon Boyega, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver, Domhnall Gleeson, Lupita Nyong’o, Andy Serkis, Max Von Sydow
Credits: Directed by J.J. Abrams, script by Lawrence Kasdan, J.J. Abrams, Michael Arndt. ALucasfilm/Walt Disney release.

Running time: 2:15

“Youth” is writer-director Paolo Sorrentino’s ode to old age, a reverie on memory and a fantasia on the last thing to go — “desire.”

He gives one last great role to Michael Caine, one more shot at not seeming streetwise to Harvey Keitel and two great scenes to the legendary Jane Fonda.

He reminds us that Rachel Weisz deserved her Oscar, and that even if he doesn’t score one for “Love & Mercy,” Paul Dano is pursuing just the sort of challenging, uncompromising roles that all but guarantee he’ll have one soon enough.

Caine is Fred Ballinger, an 80something conductor/composer who is doing his best to turn down a knighthood from the Queen. Politely.

“Oh no, I’m retired.”

Harvey Keitel is Mick Boyle, Fred’s lifelong friend, a great film director who has five assistants helping him polish his latest script.

Fred and Mick are at a spa in Switzerland, and in quieter moments, each has his alpine hallucination — the leading ladies one helped launch, the music (in cowbells, cattle lowing, birds and the crackle of a candy wrapper ) the other still hears.

Rachel Weisz is Fred’s daughter and assistant, who experiences a marital crisis that involves both men. Paul Dano is a an actor famous for playing a robot, using time at this exclusive resort to prepare for his next role.

And there’s also this morbidly obese South American so famous nobody has to say his name.

“Youth” plays like Sorrentino’s tribute to Fellini, with its langourus leering during nude swims (Miss Universe checks into the resort), its bemused drift into the indignity of a sauna, and the spa’s regimented routine of exercise, check-ups, sunbathing, meals and nightly entertainment. The filmmaker has been leaning toward Federico of late (“The Great Beauty”), pondering old age as he does.

He does this by contrasting the aged beauties of his cast with the far less attractive, but young and supple members of the staff at the spa, and a few jaw-dropping moments with the film’s Miss Universe (Madalina Diana Ghenea).

Ballinger’s vivid nightmares are about women and desire, his daughter’s are about a failed marriage and Mick’s are about a film ending, a “testament” project that cannot find a climax.

Ballinger is famous for music that he regards as trite, if personal. Dano’s actor observes, chats with Fred and mulls the fickle nature of his fame, a guy too good for the role that made him famous, dismissive of all that’s come since, but not so close-minded that he cannot figure that out.

The performances are subtle and sublime, with the exception of Keitel, who very much seems the odd man out here. His line-readings are metallic, stilted. The Cockney Caine can channel a lifetime among the rich and famous and play it posh. Not Keitel. His “street” moments work, his collaboration scenes with young writers and leisure ones rattle and jar. The lines, the entitlement, doesn’t roll off his lips.

But the surprises are rewarding, the irony expressed with the perfect touch of drollery and the climax beautifully handled, even if the film goes on one scene too long past that.

An old rule Sorrentino violates at his peril. If you spend an entire movie building up some beloved or climactic piece of music, you dare not ever show “Mr. Holland’s Opus” or “Mo Better Blues.” It will never live up to your own hype.

 
MPAA Rating: R for graphic nudity, some sexuality, and language

Cast: Michael Caine, Harvey Keitel, Rachel Weisz, Paul Dano, Jane Fonda
Credits: Directed by , script by . A Fox Searchlight release.

Running time: 2:04

They’re the funniest comic duo since Lemmon and Matthau.

Who cares if their best work was co-hosting awards shows? Amy Poehler and Tina Fey, ex-“Saturday Night Live” bandmates, funny women so utterly in sync as to be matching halves of “slap” and “stick,” simply click. Even when they’re out of character.

As they are in “Sisters,” a 40somethings-party-like-they-did-when-they-were-teens romp that casts each “sister” against type. The always-wacky Poehler is the lonely “responsible one,” the smart-downtrodden Fey tries her hand at ditzy party animal.

They make each of their creations real women with real issues and needs and a wild streak. Whatever the demands of the script (by SNL vet Paula Pell), they never become caricatures in this “Project X/Superbad/House Party” for the not-quite-menopausal.

Maura (Poehler) is a nurse, a do-gooder, all about helping and about self-help. The self-help? That’s because she’s divorced — two years and counting.

Kate (Fey) is the hellion. We can tell by the leopard print apron she uses as she applies toxic dye to a hair cut customer (Chris Parnell) whose brows she is tinting at home because she’s been fired. Again. From another salon. She’s one of those single-moms whose teen daughter (Madison Davenport) has to be “the grown-up.” Haley knows Mom’s anger-management/impulse control issues. Which sends her on vacations without Mom, without bothering to tell her where she’s going.

No wonder Maura is the one their parents (Dianne Wiest, James Brolin) trust with the news that they’re selling the family’s home — in Orlando.

Kate does not take it well. The tantrum includes some serious shots at the designer-couple who are closing on the house and cannot wait to redecorate.

“You know your cousin’s gay?”

“That’s not my cousin. That’s my husband.”

The Ellis sisters resolve — at Kate’s insistence — to throw one last “Ellis Island” party, like the ones they tossed in high school. Maybe Maura can make some time with the hunk (Ike Barinholtz) who has moved in down the street. Kate, however, has to be “the party mom” though, the one who doesn’t drink.

“I hate it when you make me the bummer.”

And they’re off — rounding up booze, decorating, sending e-vites to their old classmates, shunning those they always shunned.

Here’s where this movie’s “Saturday Night Live” content pays off. Maya Rudolph absolutely kills as the resentful shrew the sisters hated in high school.

“She looks like a fart that’s coming out sideways.”

Bobby Moynihan plays the dopey classmate who was sure he’d become a stand-up comic. Rachel Dratch has another Rachel Dratch role.

Even though there’s a drug dealer (John Cena, hysterical at underplaying) and some midlife crisis sex, this is never much darker than “Hangover Lite.” There’s little of the bitter bite of “Bridesmaids,” though a hint of “last stab at playing promiscuous party girls” ripples from the script to the actresses playing the leads.

How to dress? “A little less Forever 21, and a little more Suddenly 42.”

But the pleasure here is in catching our comic twosome in all their unfiltered Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time glory. Check out the two minutes or so set aside for Poehler and deadpan Greta Lee, as a Korean manicurist, to work out how to pronounce the nail-dresser’s name.

“Hae won.”

And for once, we  get to see the Fabulous Fey and the Peerless Poehler, cast as equals and delivering the comic goods without having to give OTHER people Golden Globes in the process.

MPAA Rating: R for crude sexual content and language throughout, and for drug use

Cast: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Dianne Wiest, James Brolin, John Leguizamo, Maya Rudolph, Ike Barinholtz, John Cena
Credits: Directed by Jason Moore, script by Paula Pell. A Universal release.

Running time: 1:58

All winning streaks must end, and you can’t say Jennifer Lawrence and David O. Russell (and Bradley Cooper) haven’t had a good run.

“Joy,” their third collaboration, is no “American Hustle” or “Silver Linings Playbook.” This is the Russell of “I Heart Huckabees” or “Nailed/Accidental Love.” Whatever he was going for here — a satire of the American “up by your bootstraps” myth, a twisted take on “build a better mousetrap” capitalism — he misses.

And it’s not a “Flirting With Disaster” miss, either. If not quite a disaster, “Joy” threatens, time and again, to take away your will to live.

Lawrence is charming and empathetic as Joy Mangano, a single mom whose entire disastrous family has come to depend on her, even if they no longer have the right. It’s the early ’70s when we meet her. Mom (Virginia Madsen, always good) has confined herself to her bedroom, locked in to her soap operas.

Long-divorced mechanic Dad (Robert DeNiro) is returned to the house by his latest wife. “He’s broken,” is all she’ll say.

Joy already has her own ex husband (Edgar Ramirez) living under her roof. He wants to be a singer, can’t support himself and soon is sharing a basement with her dad. The bills are piling up, but Joy doesn’t let the desperation show.

Only Grandma (Diane Ladd, radiant  in a bit part) has faith. She’s the one who sees great things in Joy. Joy could be “Joy the doer,” the one who lives up to that potential she glistened with in high school.

But Grandma only makes Joy mourn for the better life she should have had.  The tipping point comes when Joy makes her one grab for the Big Brass Ring. She has that one Big Idea. And there’s this new start-up, a TV network that does nothing but sell stuff, run by a sympathetic hunk (Bradley Cooper) with a mesmerizing, messianic spiel. Will she make it? Will he help, or merely be another weight, ransoming her joy?

This is a real woman’s life story, and all Russell can do to make it cinematic is to pile up the obstacles — the Dad, resentful sister (Elisabeth Rohm), Dad’s imperious and wealthy new lady-love (Isabella Rossellini) — who all doubt her– the business folk who cheat her. Because, it is implied, she is “just a woman.”

Lawrence does what she can with the material. But Joy is basically the Biblical Job, built to suffer. Even triumph won’t bring happiness, and at least failure has the advantage of familiarity.

So we may root for her. Just not that much. We may wish for this or that good thing to happen, but in business, family, ex-family and family friends will let you down.

And pairing her up with Cooper again is just a cruel tease. The last third of the film not only is about the infomercial business, it’s like an infomercial itself.

Russell sets out to frustrate, and he does. And “Joy” never rises above that, an aggravating, un-fulfilling and empty night at the cinema with great actors trapped in an overdue flop from people we were just starting to figure were flop-proof.

MPAA Rating:PG-13 for brief strong language

Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, Virginia Madsen, Bradley Cooper, Isabella Rossellini, Diane Ladd
Credits: Written and directed by David O. Russell, story by Annie Mumolo, script by . A 20th Century Fox release.

Running time: 2:02